Region 7 Board Representative Report - ACSA One Voice for Students

ACSA’s One Voice for Students Initiative strives to ensure that school leaders speak together with a common voice on educational policy in the areas of student outcomes, human resources and school funding in order to achieve the following goals:

Improve Student Outcomes ACSA is addressing this area through advocacy for additional funds for the implementation of Common Core State Standards. Furthermore, ACSA is addressing technology needs in the areas of technology tools and bandwidth requirements for the new assessments with a focus on equity for all of California’s students. ACSA is supporting AB 2319 (Bonilla) and is advocating for $1.5 to $2 billion for 2014-2015.

Human Resources ACSA’s goal is to create human resources processes that support meeting the needs of students. Teacher dismissal and the teacher evaluation process are at the forefront in this area. ACSA believes that the current teacher dismissal process is inefficient, burdensome, and too costly for school districts. Governmental Relations staff is addressing this issue through ongoing discussions on various bills, including SB 843 (Correa), SB 1164 (Liu), and AB 215 (Buchanan) in order to move toward a bifurcated system which addresses egregious conduct as well as unsatisfactory performance.

In addition, ACSA is supportive of a strengthened teacher evaluation process which includes student academic achievement growth as a component.

School Funding ACSA believes that a stable and sufficient funding system that enables all of our students to meet California’s high standards is a critical goal, as well. While the Local Control Funding Formula provides schools and districts the opportunity to utilize funds to address student needs, it is critical to create and maintain a stable and sufficient funding system which provides equity and supports student achievement of our academic standards.